Open standards

Open standards are publicly available and implementable standards. By allowing anyone to obtain and implement the standard, they can increase compatibility between various hardware and software components, since anyone with the necessary technical know-how and resources can build products that work together with those of the other vendors that base their designs on the standard (although patent holders may impose "reasonable and non-discriminatory" royalty fees and other licensing terms on implementers of the standard).

Many technical specifications that are sometimes considered standards are proprietary rather than being open, and are only available under restrictive contract terms (if they can be obtained at all) from the organization that owns the copyright for the specification.

Being an open standard also does not necessarily imply that no licenses to patent rights are needed to use the standard or that such licenses are available for free. For example, the standards published by the major internationally recognized standards bodies such as the ITU, ISO, and IEC are ordinarily considered open, but may require patent licensing fees for implementation.

Open standards which can be implemented by anyone, without royalties or other restrictions, are sometimes referred to as open formats.

There is little really universal agreement about the usage of either of the terms "open" or "standard". Some people restrict their use of the term "open" to royalty-free technologies, while others do not; and some people restrict their use of the term "standard" to technologies approved by formalized committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus basis, while others do not.